Figurative painting relies on many tools both mechanical and psychological. Traditionally, figure paintings would serve those in power, presupposing an idealized man or woman. More recently, often relying on the manipulation of photographic images to achieve painterly postures imbued with apparent moral authority and a false sense of authenticity. Slowly, more individualistic pursuits ensued, where a successful figure painter could use the subject’s surface features as a stepping off point to a deeper understanding of both the inner life of the subject, as well as the inner life of the artist portraying the portrait-subject.
This co-dependent relationship between portrait-subject and artist is an uneasy one. Each observing the other, to see how each is perceived. A bond inevitably develops between artist and portrait sitting subject. In the best of the new psychological portraits, the figure as it is portrayed, holds the keys to unlocking the inner self. Not only the subject’s self but also the artist’s and even the viewer’s selves.

And what of posthumous portraits or famous figures of the artist’s imaginative pursuit, where the connection between artist and subject is less apparent? Often times, there remains an obsessive need to record in portraiture those already gone, whether an obsession with famous figures or private, personal friends lost to death. Ultimately, all figure painting possesses elements of self-portraiture, and the personal gesture as evidenced in the artist’s recording of his total absorption in the object of his/her pursuit. In the most successful artworks, these are totally original and honest personal pursuits, regardless of the actual figure represented. The work can be most compelling where the artist allows the viewer into his/her private space, to observe the artist’s struggles with subject representation.

The ruling tendency in Chinese contemporary art is no longer figurative painting. The pendulum has swung to abstraction, multi-media and other post-modern pursuits. Despite these trends, there remains a belief that figurative art can go further. For some, there is a strong belief that figurative art is more complex, can go deeper and achieve more, despite current trends to the contrary. Perhaps it is within these trend-defying spaces, where individual pursuits will drive the figurative artwork into new 21st century realms, heretofore unexplored.

A white line bisects a space of intense blackness. Two curving lines – whose geometries differ slightly – sit in sublime misalignment balancing an all-consuming emptiness. The viewer is drawn in, and, as if standing on the edge of a great abyss, struggles against the vertiginous desire to fall into the deep black. The feeling is almost overwhelming... and then, there is the line. Simply drawn it confidently reasserts itself, drawing attention once again to the surface and pushing the viewer back from the brink. Still the nothingness perseveres as does the unnerving and unconscious desire to allow oneself be enveloped by it. In just one painting, and with a few brushstrokes, the artist Wang Jian has made manifest what written and spoken language has been unable to articulate: the universal struggle between the Void and the not-void.

Nothingness was not, the existent was not;
Darkness was hidden by darkness…
That which became was enveloped by the Void

The exhibition, curated by Adrian George, London-based writer, lecturer and Senior Curator with the British Government Art Collection, takes as its starting point a 4000-year-old Rig-Vedic poem known as the Hymn of Non-Eternity. Reflecting on Wang Jian’s extensive body of work and research material this exhibition brings together photography, works on paper and large-scale oil paintings to interrogate the origins of Wang Jian’s explorations in metaphysics, Chinese Maximalism (after Gao Minglu) and international minimalism.

Wang Jian
Born 1972, Handan, Hebei Province. 2003 completed Plastic Arts Studio course at the Chinese Painting Department, China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). Lives and works in Beijing.
As a young adult Wang Jian worked as a train driver while following a period of self-directed study – reading extensively on literature, art, history and Zen. In 1996 he moved to Beijing to pursue his art career. He has worked an editor, TV director, art director and designer and completed his studies at the influential China Central Academy of Fine Art in 2003. His work, both abstract and minimal, references his early exploration of Eastern philosophies and demonstrates in its maturity an sophistication, his growing interests in Western poetry and sociology.